I went to yet another book sale yesterday — this time it was the annual Half Price Books Tent Sale in St. Paul. Most kids books are $1 at this sale — not quite as good as the quarter-a-book sale I went to last week, but there were tons, and tons and tons of books to choose from. I came home with a number of titles from our general literature list and history read-aloud list for the upcoming school year, as well as some science titles for subjects our home library is lacking in. And of course a few random books. I just couldn’t resist delighting the boys with books about mummies, how things work, wars, and some Mr. Men/Little Miss books (those were only 25 cents each!). Miss M brought her own money and came home with a handful of Boxcar Children books, American Girl books and “A to Z mysteries”. I think I should be done with books sales for the rest of the summer though. Our books shelves are pretty overflowing at this point!
Despite all the books I buy, I still end up having many, many book
s checked out from the library as well. 🙂 One interesting book we brought home from the library a couple weeks ago is “The Little Island” by Margret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard. I read about this Caldecott-Award-Winner on someone’s blog…but once again I don’t remember whose blog it was. I think it was, again, probably someone who participates in Read Aloud Thursday!
Brown is well known for her classic books Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon — tales that are probably on the bookshelves of most homes with toddlers. We also own Red light, Green light, but I’ve never seen any of her other books before this one.
The premise of the book is fairly simple — a little island sees the seasons come and go along with the changes they bring in animals, plants and other aspects of island life. Weisgard’s illustrations are truly stunning, and I can easily see why this book won a Caldecott.
The only thing that kind of threw me “off” in this book was a cat that shows up in the middle of the story, having arrived on a sailboat with its owners. The cat proceeds to have a conversation with the island and makes extreme demands of a fish to have the fish explain how the island is part of the land. Then the story returns to being a nice, quiet nature story about how the island changes through the seasons. Yep, a bit jarring to throw that talking cat in the middle of the story.
All in all this is still a great book, and the boys said they enjoyed it. It’s the type of book in which you can savor every page, looking a the details in the drawings and talking about nature and geography.
Visit Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word to see what books other bloggers discovered this week!
Homeschool Discoveries 